Creating Inventory Segments

Create and Manage a Segment

MoPub’s network management interface allows you to group your inventory into “segments”. A “segment” is a slice of your inventory with specific apps or ad units that can be targeted to specific countries and networks. It is a combination of three variables:

Ad units/Apps

Ad networks

Geography: Based on country or several countries

Global Segment

Once your networks have been configured, you will see a Global Segment automatically created in your ‘Segments’ tab. The Global Segment contains everything you have set up in the Networks tab, including all your apps, ad units, and networks. This segment exists by default for all users and cannot be archived or deleted.

If you create a new segment (typically so you can create a unique “waterfall” for a sub-set of ad units and countries), that segment will override the network waterfall and CPMs that appear in the Global Segment, however, there are a couple additional items to keep in mind:

If you include a particular set of ad units or apps in a geo segment and do not enter a CPMs for each of your networks, those networks will not serve in that geo segment and will not default to the CPMs set in the Global Segment. In short, you will not serve ads for those networks in that geo segment.

For all other ad units and applications that were not included in that geo segment, we will default to the Global Segment CPMs.

If you do not wish to create segments, you can use the Global Segment to serve ads across all your apps and ad units, and with any networks that you have connected to MoPub.

Best Practices

In each of your segments, please make sure you have all ad units and applications included in the segment. In each segment, all networks that should be running in a particular segment have an active CPM. If you do not have a CPM present, the network will not serve for that particular segment and it will also be eliminated from going to Global Segment.

Make sure to have a simple setup with a handful of segments separated by geo and have all app and ad units targeted with an active eCPM. Try to avoid overlapping segments. If you are using overlapping segments, they will be ranked based on eCPM but you will have difficulty identifying which
ad unit and app matches are calling multiple segments at once or being eliminated from the waterfall due to overlap and not being active in that
targeted segment.

Instead of organizing your networks by campaigns, you can also create segments by ad units and/or by country and organize all your networks within
those segments. Looking at the segment, you can then manage and see all your network eCPMs in a single view.

For example, if you have one app and previously had three campaigns “AdMob Canada”, “AdMob U.S.”, and “iAd U.S.”, you would create two segments
now:

If you are trying to pause a segment, make sure the segment itself is paused. Pausing individual ad units within the segment but leaving the
segment on will result in all those targeted ad unit and geo combinations to be eliminated from the waterfall.

You can introduce Everywhere segment if you are looking to have an additional segment that will target all inventory in all geos but it just
creates additional complexity and we recommend against it.

FAQ

** What happens if a country is in more than one segment? **

You will not be able to see your network waterfall on one page because there are multiple segments that will target that ad unit + country. As a result, MoPub will determine the order in which to request ads from your networks based on the Network CPM field value across any segments including these countries and ad units.

For example, if Segment1 contains ad unit1 (AU1) mapped to Country1 and is associated with Network1 (CPM $1) and Network2 (CPM $2) and Segment2 also contains ad unit1 (AU1) mapped to multiple countries (Country1, Country 3, Country4) and is associated with Network3 (CPM $1.5) – then if an ad request comes from AU1 from Country1, then the resulting order in which Networks are called is Network2 ($2 CPM), Network3 ($1.5 CPM) and Network1 ($1 CPM). So for the same ad unit+country combination across networks, Network CPMs decide the priority of the Network waterfall.

Note: We strongly recommend that each country is only present in a single segment in order to for you to see your complete network waterfall in one segment.

Why is a network row icon grey (inactive)?

A network row will only be active(green) if the following conditions are met:

The correct ad serving identification for that network has been entered on the “Edit Network” page

The network is not paused

You have entered an eCPM in the “Network CPM” column for that network row

You can mouse over the grey icon for specific information about that network row.

Create A Segment

To create a new segment, select the Add a Segment button on the Segments tab or when you are on a segment page.

In the Create a New Segment modal, there are four steps:

Name your segment: Name your segment as descriptively as possible. You may want to include details about which apps/ad units and countries are included if it is relevant.

Select inventory: You can add all of your inventory or select specific apps, formats, or operating systems to be included in your segment.

Add geo-restrictions (optional): If you want your segment to only serve in select countries, you can geo-restrict the segment here. Note: We HIGHLY recommend not duplicating the same country + apps combination to make managing your network waterfall simpler (see section on Manage Networks In Your Segment below)

Add select networks (optional): If you only want some networks applied to your segment inventory or wish to EXCLUDE a network, you can target specific networks for the segment here. Note: Make sure you have configured your network for each app and ad unit correctly during network creation.

Manage Network Prioritization In Your Segment

Once you have created a segment, you can manage the order in which your networks are prioritized (your network “waterfall”) for each ad unit. You can also see your revenue and key performance metrics for that segment on the segment detail page.

For example, if you have App1 with 3 Ad Units (AU1, AU2, AU3), you can associate App1 (and thus, all the three Ad Units) with a country (such as US) and create a segment for this combination.

Step 1: Create a segment called “App1 – U.S.”

Step 2: When creating the segment, add ad units AU1, AU2, and AU3.

Step 3: Select the U.S. from the Geo Restrictions drop down menu.

Step 4: Add your ad networks to the segment (Note: you must have any required ad serving IDs for each network on the ‘Edit Network’ page). Select ‘Save Segments’.

Step 5: Update your Network CPMs (which determine the priority order in which an ad is requested from each network)

The “App1 – U.S.” segment will therefore only apply to your ad requests in the U.S. for App1.

Tip: If you want to setup different network prioritization (or “waterfall”) for different ad unit + country combinations, you should think about setting up separate segments to achieve this. We highly recommend that you do not create more than one segment targeted at each ad unit + country combination. You will not see all the networks for that ad unit + country combination in one segment as a result.

Within each ad unit, the networks are prioritized based on the CPM you have entered in the Network CPM column. When you change CPMs in each row, the waterfall will automatically reorder to reflect your changes.

You can also set Advanced targeting features, including Frequency Capping and Allocation Percentages here for the specific ad unit + network row.

On the Segment Detail page, you can set the CPMs by network for a specific ad unit here:

Hourly and Daily frequency capping as well as Allocation Percentages can be set here:

If you need to make a change to a bunch of ad units and networks you can select all those you want to edit and click the ‘Edit’ button located in the upper left corner.

Filters

A filter can be added to ease search of a specific unit in the segment waterfall. Filter options include: Ad Format, Apps, Platform, Networks, and Status.

Editing A Segment

You can always change the apps, ad units, ad networks, or geo-targeting for a segment. In a non-global segment, click the ‘Edit Segment’ button.

Last updated August 26, 2019

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